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Influence of technology change on today's society
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Influence of technology change on today's society
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“Is Google Making Us Stupid: A summary of the article by Nicholas Carr”
With the rising of technology in the modern age, lots of new inventions have been introduced and the appearance of those inventions has helped our life significantly. But the growth of technology has also raised a vast amount of concerns, and most of those concerns are due to the negative effects of technology to our minds – the users who benefit from it. Nicholas Carr in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” has strengthened those concerns by coming up with the idea that the advance in technology is influencing our thoughts and behaviors to be functioning differently than the way they used to be. First of all, Carr has pointed out that technology is taking away our ability to
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Carr believed that the changing process began with the appearance of the mechanical clock in the 14th century. The existence of the clock, as Carr said, has turned the “abstract framework of divided time” into “the point of reference of both action and thought.” This device makes us to begin thinking of processing everything “like clockwork”, without realizing the change in our thinking is also affecting ourselves at a biological level. Our minds no longer satisfied our feelings anymore, but rather divided what we want to do into specific sessions with the new “time” concept. Back to the original point about our readings, Maryanne Wolf - a developmental psychologist, also stated that the reading style of us nowadays, due to the Internet, has transformed into a different style of reading – “a style of reading that puts ‘efficiency’ and ‘immediacy’ above all else.” This style of reading, once again, shows the change in our mindsets. We are aiming for the quick result and ignoring the process. We stop asking “how, where and why”, and simply accept the answers that are handed to us, since it would be faster that way. The pursuing of “effiency” and “immediacy” is not only affecting our thoughts and behaviors, but also affecting the society that we are living in. The NewYork Times has already turned the second and third pages of every edition to article abstracts, since the director believed that such a change will benefit readers by giving them a quick, brief version of daily news, and spare them from the “less efficient” method that is actually turning the page and reading the articles. In Google headquarters, engineers and scientists are working on the artificial intelligence and as one of the founders of Google has said in an interview: “If you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain,
Advancements in technology have strived to make life easier for so many people. In most cases, the advancements have achieved its goal, but in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr questions if the improvements in society have unintentionally hindered our thought process overall. Carr begins the article by providing personal instances when his concentration seemed to diminish due to the internet. He explains how he now loses interest when reading lengthy portions, his mind just can’t seem to remain connected to his readings. He then proceeds to talk about how today’s life is surrounded by the internet, and explains the pros and cons of it. The negative side of it is that his mind now wonders off when seeking information from
Together they work together as a whole in order to persuade his audience of those involved in technology. Carr uses these strategies in order to back up his information and validate his point. Carr begins by using pathos by stating an anecdote from the movie A Space Odyssey, then he uses logos by stating factual evidence and statistics, lastly Carr uses ethos by stating appropriate vocabulary and conceding to opposition. Throughout the article Carr compares the past and present and how the Internet has changed not only himself, but also people. In order to show his credibility, Carr uses research and examples of other credible writers who have the same beliefs as he does on the Internet. Due to the article being lengthy in text we are able to assume that Carr does that on purpose in order to validate his point that the Internet is affecting our mind as it shortens our attention span and ability to think creatively. The purpose of the excerpt is to persuade his audience of those involved in technology that people in the society today are unable to have complete focus on a longer text due to the Internet causing us to artificial intelligence. For this purpose, Carr develops an influential tone for his audience
With the rise of technology and the staggering availability of information, the digital age has come about in full force, and will only grow from here. Any individual with an internet connection has a vast amount of knowledge at his fingertips. As long as one is online, he is mere clicks away from Wikipedia or Google, which allows him to find what he needs to know. Despite this, Nicholas Carr questions whether Google has a positive impact on the way people take in information. In his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr explores the internet’s impact on the way people read. He argues that the availability of so much information has diminished the ability to concentrate on reading, referencing stories of literary types who no longer have the capacity to sit down and read a book, as well as his own personal experiences with this issue. The internet presents tons of data at once, and it is Carr’s assumption that our brains will slowly become wired to better receive this information.
“With every new innovation, cultural prophets bickered over whether we were facing a technological apocalypse or a utopia” (Thompson 9). This quote states that with every significant break-through with technology, people contemplate whether it will have a positive or negative effect on mankind. Technology allows for external memory sources, connections to databases, and it allow easy communication between people. Thompson then directly counters Carr’s hypothesis and states that “[c]ertainly, if we are intellectually lazy or prone to cheating and shortcuts, or if we simply don’t pay much attention to how our tools affect the way we work, then yes - we become… over reliant” (Thompson 18). In his opinion, “[s]o yes, when we’re augmenting ourselves, we can be smarter… But our digital tools can also leave us smarter even when we’re not actively using them” (Thompson
If only my local library could hold the vast quantity of information that my hand held smart phone does. Carr insinuates that Google (and the internet) is making us stupid. I say they are making us lazy. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr informatively states that with the advancement of technology, Google search engine, and the internet we are become more distracted—with all the different forms of flash media, the amount of hyper-links after hyper-link after hyper-links, and clickable adds-- in turn we are doing less critical reading by way of the internet as opposed to a printed book. Being able to glance over several articles in hour’s verses days looking through books; being able to jump from link to link in order to get the information you need, never looking at the same page twice has decrease out deep thinking and reading skills. Now days, all forms of reading, e.g. newspaper, magazine, etc. are small amount of reading to get the main idea of what’s going on and if you would like more information you will have to go to another page to do so. In the end, C...
Humans are becoming more technologically-efficient every day. New inventions and innovations are constantly being made. The Internet is becoming more “reliable” every day. However, how much do we really get from the constant advancement of Internet use and smarter technology? Should we look at their contributions to the world as a benefactor or a curse? The common effect of “artificial intelligence” in the technology we use every day is examined by two brilliant authors, Nicholas Carr and Jamias Cascio. In Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, he explains the effects of the Internet and technology in our society and claims that the overuse of technology is dangerous and can affect how our mind operates. Jamias Cascio, on the other hand, uses his article “Get Smarter” to show the positive effects of technology in our constantly adaptive society claims that technology may just be making our society smarter and more efficient. While Carr and Cascio both use the claim of cause in their articles to provide valid points on how technology affects our society, Carr’s article proves to be more effective because it focuses on skeptical-based evidence and uses a variety of appeals and proofs.
Author Nicholas Carr’s article “Is Google making us Stupid,” discusses how the use of the computer affects our thought process. Carr starts out talking about his own experience as a writer and how he felt like “something had been tinkering with his brain, remapping his neural circuitry and reprogramming his memory”(313). Basically, he is acknowledging that since he started using the Internet his research techniques have changed. Carr believes that before he would immerse himself in books, lengthy articles and long stretches of prose allowing his mind to get caught up in the narrative or the
In the articles, “How Facts Backfire” and “Is Google Making Us Stupid”, Keohane and Carr explain the cognitive blocks we are faced with in society. Keohane explains how we can be misinformed because of our beliefs. These beliefs can cloud our judgement of what is true and what isn’t true. Carr focuses on how the internet has changed the way we think. Carr includes how the internet can distract us, making tasks harder to complete. Both Keohane and Carr show us the negatives side effects of cognition.
If you find yourself skimming through pages, looking for bullet points and your mind wandering off, you might be suffering the effects of Google making you stupid. These are the things that Nicholas Carr talks about in his essay “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” was originally published in July 2008 in Atlantic magazine. Carr argues that the use of technology on the daily basis has made us unable to go into deeper thought about things. Along with the opinion of Scientists and other “literary types” he asserts that the web has indeed made us change the way we think. Power Browsing is the new way people are reading, this is where you look from title to title, surfing the web from link to link. Overall, he advocates that eventually our brains will
In composing “Is Google Making Us More Stupid” Nicholas Carr wants his audience to be feared by the internet while at the same time he wants his work to seem more creditable. Nicholas Carr uses many different types of evidence to show us that we should be scared and feared as well as his credibility. Carr’s audience is people who think like him, who find themselves getting lost on the internet while reading something, someone who is educated and uses the internet to look up the answers to questions or to read an article or book.
He states how he used to spend hours reading, but his concentration started to drift after two or three pages. He backed up his theory with stories from others who say they’re experiencing the same thing. But they still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how the internet affects cognition. After a brief history lesson, Carr starts to incorporate Google into the article. He tells us about Google’s history and their mission. Carr states how Google, and the internet itself, have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind. Apparently these companies do not want us reading slowly or for leisure. Carr then ends the article by stating that we are turning into robots ourselves, and that we are relying on computers to mediate our understanding of the
Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and Sherry Turkle’s “How Computers Change the Way We Think” both discuss the influence of technology to their own understanding and perspective. The first work by Nicholas Carr is about the impact technology has on his mind. He is skeptical about the effect it could cause in the long term of it. He gives credible facts and studies done to prove his point. While Sherry Turkle’s work gives a broad idea of the impact of technology has caused through the years. She talks about the advances in technology and how it is changing how people communicate, learn and think. In both works “Is Google Making Us Stupid” and “How Computers Change the Way We Think” the authors present
First we analyze Carr’s article. Looking at this cloud the words ‘reading’ and ‘information’ jump off the screen. The two words appear the highest number of times in the article, 23 and 17 times respectively. Other words that appear frequently are ‘brain’. ‘Internet’, ‘new’ and ‘work’ which all appear 12 times.
In Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr disputes that due to new digital tools, peoples’ ability to retain and acquire information has been negatively altered. Even though, we have information at our fingertips, we often don’t take the time to soak in all the information. Carr mentions Bruce Friedman, a blogger, who finds it extremely difficult to read a “longish article on the web” and to try to focus on the importance of the text holistically (Carr 316). This is an issue that many can relate even Carr knows that, “ the deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle (Carr 314). Additionally, media theorist Mcluhan describes the net as “chipping away [mental] capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr 315). In essences, Carr states that we are having less of an attention span and consequently, less patience for longer articles (Carr 314). Therefore, this affects media outlets such as magazines, newspapers, and other articles, because they must conform and shorten their texts to fit the status quo that people safely enjoy (Carr 321). In addition, the net forces people to be efficient, and so, causes people to “weaken [their] capacity for deep reading” (Carr 317). People are becoming more driven on how quick he or she has to do something rather than think why this text is important. As a consequence, Carr believes that we are starting to lose our ability to be critical readers and
The following essay will discuss how the ideas in “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, is expressed in the futuristic novel Feed, by M.T Anderson.